Alibaba Acquires Chinese Mobile App Analytics Service

Rumors in recent weeks said Alibaba would acquire this company for about USD80 million; however, Umeng did not reveal any financial details in its acquisition announcement, which might mean it sold for considerably less. After the acquisition, Umeng will apparently maintain independent operations from Alibaba.

Wu Yongming, president for Alibaba's wireless business unit, told local media that they will help Umeng become an independent platform that provides comprehensive services to mobile developers. By integrating Alibaba's existing resources, the company will offer a series of value-added services such as promotions, cloud storage, and advertising systems.

Jiang Fan, founder and chief executive officer of Umeng, said this acquisition allows Umeng to invest more resources into developer services. Since this industry has not yet achieved overall profitability, developers need more and sustained free-of-charge services to ease pressure during their growth. Meanwhile, Umeng will be able to maintain independent operation, said Jiang.

Founded in April 2010, Umeng started as a project under Innovation Works and it focused on mobile application statistical analysis. With its development, the company gradually transferred to a one-stop solution provider, offering services from development to operation to developers. Its products and services cover mobile application statistical analysis, mobile game statistical analysis, social components, message pushing, and CDN cloud acceleration. So far, Umeng claims to have reached 590 million active devices of various operating systems, 180,000 applications, and 60,000 developers.